(Delivered at Plymouth on the Twenty-Second Day of December, 1802,
in Commemoration of the Landing of the Pilgrims)
Among the sentiments of most powerful operation upon the human
heart, and most highly honorable to the human character, are those
of veneration for our forefathers, and of love for our posterity.
They form the connecting links between the selfish and the social
passions. By the fundamental principle of Christianity, the
happiness of the individual is interwoven, by innumerable and
imperceptible ties, with that of his contemporaries. By the power
of filial reverence and parental affection, individual existence is
extended beyond the limits of individual life, and the happiness of
every age is chained in mutual dependence upon that of every other.
Respect for his ancestors excites, in the breast of man, interest in
their history, attachment to their characters, concern for their
errors, involuntary pride in their virtues. Love for his posterity
spurs him to exertion for their support, stimulates him to virtue
for their example, and fills him with the tenderest solicitude for
their welfare. Man, therefore, was not made for himself alone. No,
he was made for his country, by the obligations of the social
compact; he was made for his species, by the Christian duties of
universal charity; he was made for all ages past, by the sentiment
of reverence for his forefathers; and he was made for all future
times, by the impulse of affection for his progeny. Under the
influence of these principles,
"Existence sees him spurn her bounded reign."
They redeem his nature from the subjection of time and space; he is
no longer a "puny insect shivering at a breeze"; he is the glory of
creation, formed to occupy all time and all extent; bounded, during
his residence upon earth, only to the boundaries of the world, and
destined to life and immortality in brighter regions, when the
fabric of nature itself shall dissolve and perish.
The voice of history has not, in all its compass, a note but answers
in unison with these sentiments. The barbarian chieftain, who
defended his country against the Roman invasion, driven to the
remotest extremity of Britain, and stimulating his followers to
battle by all that has power of persuasion upon the human heart,
concluded his persuasion by an appeal to these irresistible
feelings: "Think of your forefathers and of your posterity." The
Romans themselves, at the pinnacle of civilization, were actuated by
the same impressions, and celebrated, in anniversary festivals,
every great event which had signalized the annals of their
forefathers. To multiply instances where it were impossible to
adduce an exception would be to waste your time and abuse your
patience; but in the sacred volume, which contains the substance of
our firmest faith and of our most precious hopes, these passions not
only maintain their highest efficacy, but are sanctioned by the
express injunctions of the Divine Legislator to his chosen people.
The revolutions of time furnish no previous example of a nation
shooting up to maturity and expanding into greatness with the
rapidity which has characterized the growth of the American people.
In the luxuriance of youth, and in the vigor of manhood, it is
pleasing and instructive to look backwards upon the helpless days of
infancy; but in the continual and essential changes of a growing
subject, the transactions of that early period would be soon
obliterated from the memory but for some periodical call of
attention to aid the silent records of the historian. Such
celebrations arouse and gratify the kindliest emotions of the bosom.
They are faithful pledges of the respect we bear to the memory of
our ancestors and of the tenderness with which we cherish the rising
generation. They introduce the sages and heroes of ages past to the
notice and emulation of succeeding times; they are at once
testimonials of our gratitude, and schools of virtue to our
children.
These sentiments are wise; they are honorable; they are virtuous;
their cultivation is not merely innocent pleasure, it is incumbent
duty. Obedient to their dictates, you, my fellow-citizens, have
instituted and paid frequent observance to this annual solemnity.
And what event of weightier intrinsic importance, or of more
extensive consequences, was ever selected for this honorary
distinction?
In reverting to the period of our origin, other nations have
generally been compelled to plunge into the chaos of impenetrable
antiquity, or to trace a lawless ancestry into the caverns of
ravishers and robbers. It is your peculiar privilege to
commemorate, in this birthday of your nation, an event ascertained
in its minutest details; an event of which the principal actors are
known to you familiarly, as if belonging to your own age; an event
of a magnitude before which imagination shrinks at the imperfection
of her powers. It is your further happiness to behold, in those
eminent characters, who were most conspicuous in accomplishing the
settlement of your country, men upon whose virtue you can dwell with
honest exultation. The founders of your race are not handed down to
you, like the father of the Roman people, as the sucklings of a
wolf. You are not descended from a nauseous compound of fanaticism
and sensuality, whose only argument was the sword, and whose only
paradise was a brothel. No Gothic scourge of God, no Vandal pest of
nations, no fabled fugitive from the flames of Troy, no bastard
Norman tyrant, appears among the list of worthies who first landed
on the rock, which your veneration has preserved as a lasting
monument of their achievement. The great actors of the day we now
solemnize were illustrious by their intrepid valor no less than by
their Christian graces, but the clarion of conquest has not blazoned
forth their names to all the winds of heaven. Their glory has not
been wafted over oceans of blood to the remotest regions of the
earth. They have not erected to themselves colossal statues upon
pedestals of human bones, to provoke and insult the tardy hand of
heavenly retribution. But theirs was "the better fortitude of
patience and heroic martyrdom." Theirs was the gentle temper of
Christian kindness; the rigorous observance of reciprocal justice;
the unconquerable soul of conscious integrity. Worldly fame has
been parsimonious of her favor to the memory of those generous
companions. Their numbers were small; their stations in life
obscure; the object of their enterprise unostentatious; the theatre
of their exploits remote; how could they possibly be favorites of
worldly Fame--that common crier, whose existence is only known by
the assemblage of multitudes; that pander of wealth and greatness,
so eager to haunt the palaces of fortune, and so fastidious to the
houseless dignity of virtue; that parasite of pride, ever scornful
to meekness, and ever obsequious to insolent power; that heedless
trumpeter, whose ears are deaf to modest merit, and whose eyes are
blind to bloodless, distant excellence?
When the persecuted companions of Robinson, exiles from their native
land, anxiously sued for the privilege of removing a thousand
leagues more distant to an untried soil, a rigorous climate, and a
savage wilderness, for the sake of reconciling their sense of
religious duty with their affections for their country, few, perhaps
none of them, formed a conception of what would be, within two
centuries, the result of their undertaking. When the jealous and
niggardly policy of their British sovereign denied them even that
humblest of requests, and instead of liberty would barely consent to
promise connivance, neither he nor they might be aware that they
were laying the foundations of a power, and that he was sowing the
seeds of a spirit, which, in less than two hundred years, would
stagger the throne of his descendants, and shake his united kingdoms
to the centre. So far is it from the ordinary habits of mankind to
calculate the importance of events in their elementary principles,
that had the first colonists of our country ever intimated as a part
of their designs the project of founding a great and mighty nation,
the finger of scorn would have pointed them to the cells of bedlam
as an abode more suitable for hatching vain empires than the
solitude of a transatlantic desert.
These consequences, then so little foreseen, have unfolded
themselves, in all their grandeur, to the eyes of the present age.
It is a common amusement of speculative minds to contrast the
magnitude of the most important events with the minuteness of their
primeval causes, and the records of mankind are full of examples for
such contemplations. It is, however, a more profitable employment
to trace the constituent principles of future greatness in their
kernel; to detect in the acorn at our feet the germ of that majestic
oak, whose roots shoot down to the centre and whose branches aspire
to the skies. Let it be, then, our present occupation to inquire
and endeavor to ascertain the causes first put in operation at the
period of our commemoration, and already productive of such
magnificent effects; to examine with reiterated care and minute
attention the characters of those men who gave the first impulse to
a new series of events in the history of the world; to applaud and
emulate those qualities of their minds which we shall find deserving
of our admiration; to recognize with candor those features which
forbid approbation or even require censure, and, finally, to lay
alike their frailties and their perfections to our own hearts,
either as warning or as example.
Of the various European settlements upon this continent, which have
finally merged in one independent nation, the first establishments
were made at various times, by several nations, and under the
influence of different motives. In many instances, the conviction of
religious obligation formed one and a powerful inducement of the
adventures; but in none, excepting the settlement at Plymouth, did
they constitute the sole and exclusive actuating cause. Worldly
interest and commercial speculation entered largely into the views
of other settlers, but the commands of conscience were the only
stimulus to the emigrants from Leyden. Previous to their expedition
hither, they had endured a long banishment from their native
country. Under every species of discouragement, they undertook the
vogage; they performed it in spite of numerous and almost
insuperable obstacles; they arrived upon a wilderness bound with
frost and hoary with snow, without the boundaries of their charter,
outcasts from all human society, and coasted five weeks together, in
the dead of winter, on this tempestuous shore, exposed at once to
the fury of the elements, to the arrows of the native savage, and to
the impending horrors of famine.
Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which
difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These
qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as
attendants in the retinue of strong passions. From the first
discovery of the Western Hemisphere by Columbus until the settlement
of Virginia which immediately preceded that of Plymouth, the various
adventurers from the ancient world had exhibited upon innumerable
occasions that ardor of enterprise and that stubbornness of pursuit
which set all danger at defiance, and chained the violence of nature
at their feet. But they were all instigated by personal interests.
Avarice and ambition had tuned their souls to that pitch of exaltation.
Selfish passions were the parents of their heroism. It was reserved
for the first settlers of New England to perform achievements
equally arduous, to trample down obstructions equally formidable, to
dispel dangers equally terrific, under the single inspiration of
conscience. To them even liberty herself was but a subordinate and
secondary consideration. They claimed exemption from the mandates
of human authority, as militating with their subjection to a
superior power. Before the voice of heaven they silenced even the
calls of their country.
Yet, while so deeply impressed with the sense of religious
obligation, they felt, in all its energy, the force of that tender
tie which binds the heart of every virtuous man to his native
land. It was to renew that connection with their country which had
been severed by their compulsory expatriation, that they resolved to
face all the hazards of a perilous navigation and all the labors of
a toilsome distant settlement. Under the mild protection of the
Batavian government, they enjoyed already that freedom of religious
worship, for which they had resigned so many comforts and enjoyments
at home; but their hearts panted for a restoration to the bosom of
their country. Invited and urged by the open-hearted and truly
benevolent people who had given them an asylum from the persecution
of their own kindred to form their settlement within the territories
then under their jurisdiction, the love of their country
predominated over every influence save that of conscience alone, and
they preferred the precarious chance of relaxation from the bigoted
rigor of the English government to the certain liberality and
alluring offers of the Hollanders. Observe, my countrymen, the
generous patriotism, the cordial union of soul, the conscious yet
unaffected vigor which beam in their application to the British
monarch:--
"They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their mother
country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land. They were
knit together in a strict and sacred bond, to take care of the good
of each other and of the whole. It was not with them as with other
men, whom small things could discourage, or small discontents cause
to wish themselves again at home."
Children of these exalted Pilgrims! Is there one among you who can
hear the simple and pathetic energy of these expressions without
tenderness and admiration? Venerated shades of our forefathers! No,
ye were, indeed, not ordinary men! That country which had ejected
you so cruelly from her bosom you still delighted to contemplate in
the character of an affectionate and beloved mother. The sacred bond
which knit you together was indissoluble while you lived; and oh,
may it be to your descendants the example and the pledge of harmony
to the latest period of time! The difficulties and dangers, which so
often had defeated attempts of similar establishments, were unable
to subdue souls tempered like yours. You heard the rigid
interdictions; you saw the menacing forms of toil and danger,
forbidding your access to this land of promise; but you heard
without dismay; you saw and disdained retreat. Firm and undaunted in
the confidence of that sacred bond; conscious of the purity, and
convinced of the importance of your motives, you put your trust in
the protecting shield of Providence, and smiled defiance at the
combining terrors of human malice and of elemental strife. These, in
the accomplishment of your undertaking, you were summoned to
encounter in their most hideous forms; these you met with that
fortitude, and combatted with that perseverance, which you had
promised in their anticipation; these you completely vanquished in
establishing the foundations of New England, and the day which we
now commemorate is the perpetual memorial of your triumph.
It were an occupation peculiarly pleasing to cull from our early
historians, and exhibit before you every detail of this transaction;
to carry you in imagination on board their bark at the first moment
of her arrival in the bay; to accompany Carver, Winslow, Bradford,
and Standish, in all their excursions upon the desolate coast; to
follow them into every rivulet and creek where they endeavored to
find a firm footing, and to fix, with a pause of delight and
exultation, the instant when the first of these heroic adventurers
alighted on the spot where you, their descendants, now enjoy the
glorious and happy reward of their labors. But in this grateful
task, your former orators, on this anniversary, have anticipated all
that the most ardent industry could collect, and gratified all that
the most inquisitive curiosity could desire. To you, my friends,
every occurrence of that momentous period is already familiar. A
transient allusion to a few characteristic instances, which mark the
peculiar history of the Plymouth settlers, may properly supply the
place of a narrative, which, to this auditory, must be superfluous.
One of these remarkable incidents is the execution of that
instrument of government by which they formed themselves into a body
politic, the day after their arrival upon the coast, and previous to
their first landing. This is, perhaps, the only instance in human
history of that positive, original social compact, which speculative
philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of
government. Here was a unanimous and personal assent, by all the
individuals of the community, to the association by which they
became a nation. It was the result of circumstances and discussions
which had occurred during their passage from Europe, and is a full
demonstration that the nature of civil government, abstracted from
the political institutions of their native country, had been an
object of their serious meditation. The settlers of all the former
European colonies had contented themselves with the powers conferred
upon them by their respective charters, without looking beyond the
seal of the royal parchment for the measure of their rights and the
rule of their duties. The founders of Plymouth had been impelled by
the peculiarities of their situation to examine the subject with
deeper and more comprehensive research. After twelve years of
banishment from the land of their first allegiance, during which
they had been under an adoptive and temporary subjection to another
sovereign, they must naturally have been led to reflect upon the
relative rights and duties of allegiance and subjection. They had
resided in a city, the seat of a university, where the polemical and
political controversies of the time were pursued with uncommon
fervor. In this period they had witnessed the deadly struggle
between the two parties, into which the people of the United
Provinces, after their separation from the crown of Spain, had
divided themselves. The contest embraced within its compass not only
theological doctrines, but political principles, and Maurice and
Barnevelt were the temporal leaders of the same rival factions, of
which Episcopius and Polyander were the ecclesiastical champions.
That the investigation of the fundamental principles of government
was deeply implicated in these dissensions is evident from the
immortal work of Grotius, upon the rights of war and peace, which
undoubtedly originated from them. Grotius himself had been a most
distinguished actor and sufferer in those important scenes of
internal convulsion, and his work was first published very shortly
after the departure of our forefathers from Leyden. It is well
known that in the course of the contest Mr. Robinson more than once
appeared, with credit to himself, as a public disputant against
Episcopius; and from the manner in which the fact is related by
Governor Bradford, it is apparent that the whole English Church at
Leyden took a zealous interest in the religious part of the
controversy. As strangers in the land, it is presumable that they
wisely and honorably avoided entangling themselves in the political
contentions involved with it. Yet the theoretic principles, as they
were drawn into discussion, could not fail to arrest their
attention, and must have assisted them to form accurate ideas
concerning the origin and extent of authority among men, independent
of positive institutions. The importance of these circumstances
will not be duly weighed without taking into consideration the state
of opinion then prevalent in England. The general principles of
government were there little understood and less examined. The
whole substance of human authority was centred in the simple
doctrine of royal prerogative, the origin of which was always traced
in theory to divine institution. Twenty years later, the subject
was more industriously sifted, and for half a century became one of
the principal topics of controversy between the ablest and most
enlightened men in the nation. The instrument of voluntary
association executed on board the Mayflower testifies that the
parties to it had anticipated the improvement of their nation.
Another incident, from which we may derive occasion for important
reflections, was the attempt of these original settlers to establish
among them that community of goods and of labor, which fanciful
politicians, from the days of Plato to those of Rousseau, have
recommended as the fundamental law of a perfect republic. This
theory results, it must be acknowledged, from principles of
reasoning most flattering to the human character. If industry,
frugality, and disinterested integrity were alike the virtues of
all, there would, apparently, be more of the social spirit, in
making all property a common stock, and giving to each individual a
proportional title to the wealth of the whole. Such is the basis
upon which Plato forbids, in his Republic, the division of property.
Such is the system upon which Rousseau pronounces the first man who
enclosed a field with a fence, and, said, "This is mine," a traitor
to the human species. A wiser, and more useful philosophy, however,
directs us to consider man according to the nature in which he was
formed; subject to infirmities, which no wisdom can remedy; to
weaknesses, which no institution can strengthen; to vices, which no
legislation can correct. Hence, it becomes obvious that separate
property is the natural and indisputable right of separate exertion;
that community of goods without community of toil is oppressive and
unjust; that it counteracts the laws of nature, which prescribe that
he only who sows the seed shall reap the harvest; that it
discourages all energy, by destroying its rewards; and makes the
most virtuous and active members of society the slaves and drudges
of the worst. Such was the issue of this experiment among our
forefathers, and the same event demonstrated the error of the system
in the elder settlement of Virginia. Let us cherish that spirit of
harmony which prompted our forefathers to make the attempt, under
circumstances more favorable to its success than, perhaps, ever
occurred upon earth. Let us no less admire the candor with which
they relinquished it, upon discovering its irremediable inefficacy.
To found principles of government upon too advantageous an estimate
of the human character is an error of inexperience, the source of
which is so amiable that it is impossible to censure it with
severity. We have seen the same mistake, committed in our own age,
and upon a larger theatre. Happily for our ancestors, their
situation allowed them to repair it before its effects had proved
destructive. They had no pride of vain philosophy to support, no
perfidious rage of faction to glut, by persevering in their mistakes
until they should be extinguished in torrents of blood.
As the attempt to establish among themselves the community of goods
was a seal of that sacred bond which knit them so closely together,
so the conduct they observed towards the natives of the country
displays their steadfast adherence to the rules of justice and their
faithful attachment to those of benevolence and charity.
No European settlement ever formed upon this continent has been more
distinguished for undeviating kindness and equity towards the
savages. There are, indeed, moralists who have questioned the right
of the Europeans to intrude upon the possessions of the aboriginals
in any case, and under any limitations whatsoever. But have they
maturely considered the whole subject? The Indian right of
possession itself stands, with regard to the greatest part of the
country, upon a questionable foundation. Their cultivated fields;
their constructed habitations; a space of ample sufficiency for
their subsistence, and whatever they had annexed to themselves by
personal labor, was undoubtedly, by the laws of nature, theirs. But
what is the right of a huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles
over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey? Shall the
liberal bounties of Providence to the race of man be monopolized by
one of ten thousand for whom they were created? Shall the exuberant
bosom of the common mother, amply adequate to the nourishment of
millions, be claimed exclusively by a few hundreds of her offspring?
Shall the lordly savage not only disdain the virtues and enjoyments
of civilization himself, but shall he control the civilization of a
world? Shall he forbid the wilderness to blossom like a rose?
Shall he forbid the oaks of the forest to fall before the ax of
industry, and to rise again, transformed into the habitations of
ease and elegance? Shall he doom an immense region of the globe to
perpetual desolation, and to hear the howlings of the tiger and the
wolf silence forever the voice of human gladness? Shall the fields
and the valleys, which a beneficent God has formed to teem with the
life of innumerable multitudes, be condemned to everlasting
barrenness? Shall the mighty rivers, poured out by the hand of
nature, as channels of communication between numerous nations, roll
their waters in sullen silence and eternal solitude to the deep?
Have hundreds of commodious harbors, a thousand leagues of coast,
and a boundless ocean, been spread in the front of this land, and
shall every purpose of utility to which they could apply be
prohibited by the tenant of the woods? No, generous philanthropists!
Heaven has not been thus inconsistent in the works of its hands.
Heaven has not thus placed at irreconcilable strife its moral laws
with its physical creation. The Pilgrims of Plymouth obtained their
right of possession to the territory on which they settled, by
titles as fair and unequivocal as any human property can be held.
By their voluntary association they recognized their allegiance to
the government of Britain, and in process of time received whatever
powers and authorities could be conferred upon them by a charter
from their sovereign. The spot on which they fixed had belonged to
an Indian tribe, totally extirpated by that devouring pestilence
which had swept the country shortly before their arrival. The
territory, thus free from all exclusive possession, they might have
taken by the natural right of occupancy. Desirous, however, of
giving ample satisfaction to every pretense of prior right, by
formal and solemn conventions with the chiefs of the neighboring
tribes, they acquired the further security of a purchase. At their
hands the children of the desert had no cause of complaint. On the
great day of retribution, what thousands, what millions of the
American race will appear at the bar of judgment to arraign their
European invading conquerors! Let us humbly hope that the fathers
of the Plymouth Colony will then appear in the whiteness of
innocence. Let us indulge in the belief that they will not only be
free from all accusation of injustice to these unfortunate sons of
nature, but that the testimonials of their acts of kindness and
benevolence towards them will plead the cause of their virtues, as
they are now authenticated by the record of history upon earth.
Religious discord has lost her sting; the cumbrous weapons of
theological warfare are antiquated; the field of politics supplies
the alchemists of our times with materials of more fatal explosion,
and the butchers of mankind no longer travel to another world for
instruments of cruelty and destruction. Our age is too enlightened
to contend upon topics which concern only the interests of eternity;
the men who hold in proper contempt all controversies about trifles,
except such as inflame their own passions, have made it a
commonplace censure against your ancestors, that their zeal was
enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however
aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant
themselves. Against these objections, your candid judgment will not
require an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude
for the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. The
original grounds of their separation from the Church of England were
not objects of a magnitude to dissolve the bonds of communion, much
less those of charity, between Christian brethren of the same
essential principles. Some of them, however, were not inconsiderable,
and numerous inducements concurred to give them an extraordinary
interest in their eyes. When that portentous system of abuses, the
Papal dominion, was overturned, a great variety of religious sects
arose in its stead in the several countries, which for many
centuries before had been screwed beneath its subjection. The
fabric of the reformation, first undertaken in England upon a
contracted basis, by a capricious and sanguinary tyrant, had been
successively overthrown and restored, renewed and altered, according
to the varying humors and principles of four successive monarchs.
To ascertain the precise point of division between the genuine
institutions of Christianity and the corruptions accumulated upon
them in the progress of fifteen centuries, was found a task of
extreme difficulty throughout the Christian world.
Men of the profoundest learning, of the sublimest genius, and of the
purest integrity, after devoting their lives to the research,
finally differed in their ideas upon many great points, both of
doctrine and discipline. The main question, it was admitted on all
hands, most intimately concerned the highest interests of man, both
temporal and eternal. Can we wonder that men who felt their
happiness here and their hopes of hereafter, their worldly welfare
and the kingdom of heaven at stake, should sometimes attach an
importance beyond their intrinsic weight to collateral points of
controversy, connected with the all-involving object of the
reformation? The changes in the forms and principles of religious
worship were introduced and regulated in England by the hand of
public authority. But that hand had not been uniform or steady in
its operations. During the persecutions inflicted in the interval
of Popish restoration under the reign of Mary, upon all who favored
the reformation, many of the most zealous reformers had been
compelled to fly their country. While residing on the continent of
Europe, they had adopted the principles of the most complete and
rigorous reformation, as taught and established by Calvin. On
returning afterwards to their native country, they were dissatisfied
with the partial reformation, at which, as they conceived, the
English establishment had rested; and claiming the privilege of
private conscience, upon which alone any departure from the Church
of Rome could be justified, they insisted upon the right of adhering
to the system of their own preference, and, of course, upon that of
nonconformity to the establishment prescribed by the royal
authority. The only means used to convince them of error and
reclaim them from dissent was force, and force served but to confirm
the opposition it was meant to suppress. By driving the founders of
the Plymouth Colony into exile, it constrained them to absolute
separation from the Church of England; and by the refusal afterwards
to allow them a positive toleration, even in this American
wilderness, the council of James I. rendered that separation
irreconcilable. Viewing their religious liberties here, as held
only by sufferance, yet bound to them by all the ties of conviction,
and by all their sufferings for them, could they forbear to look
upon every dissenter among themselves with a jealous eye? Within
two years after their landing, they beheld a rival settlement
attempted in their immediate neighborhood; and not long after, the
laws of self-preservation compelled them to break up a nest of
revelers, who boasted of protection from the mother country, and who
had recurred to the easy but pernicious resource of feeding their
wanton idleness, by furnishing the savages with the means, the
skill, and the instruments of European destruction. Toleration, in
that instance, would have been self-murder, and many other examples
might be alleged, in which their necessary measures of self-defense
have been exaggerated into cruelty, and their most indispensable
precautions distorted into persecution. Yet shall we not pretend
that they were exempt from the common laws of mortality, or entirely
free from all the errors of their age. Their zeal might sometimes
be too ardent, but it was always sincere. At this day, religious
indulgence is one of our clearest duties, because it is one of our
undisputed rights. While we rejoice that the principles of genuine
Christianity have so far triumphed over the prejudices of a former
generation, let us fervently hope for the day when it will prove
equally victorious over the malignant passions of our own.
In thus calling your attention to some of the peculiar features in
the principles, the character, and the history of our forefathers,
it is as wide from my design, as I know it would be from your
approbation, to adorn their memory with a chaplet plucked from the
domain of others. The occasion and the day are more peculiarly
devoted to them, and let it never be dishonored with a contracted
and exclusive spirit. Our affections as citizens embrace the whole
extent of the Union, and the names of Raleigh, Smith, Winthrop,
Calvert, Penn, and Oglethorpe, excite in our minds recollections
equally pleasing and gratitude equally fervent with those of Carver
and Bradford. Two centuries have not yet elapsed since the first
European foot touched the soil which now constitutes the American
Union. Two centuries more and our numbers must exceed those of
Europe itself. The destinies of this empire, as they appear in
prospect before us, disdain the powers of human calculation. Yet,
as the original founder of the Roman state is said once to have
lifted upon his shoulders the fame and fortunes of all his
posterity, so let us never forget that the glory and greatness of
all our descendants is in our hands. Preserve in all their purity,
refine, if possible, from all their alloy, those virtues which we
this day commemorate as the ornament of our forefathers. Adhere to
them with inflexible resolution, as to the horns of the altar;
instill them with unwearied perseverance into the minds of your
children; bind your souls and theirs to the national Union as the
chords of life are centred in the heart, and you shall soar with
rapid and steady wing to the summit of human glory. Nearly a
century ago, one of those rare minds to whom it is given to discern
future greatness in its seminal principles upon contemplating the
situation of this continent, pronounced, in a vein of poetic
inspiration, "Westward the star of empire takes its way." Let us
unite in ardent supplication to the Founder of nations and the
Builder of worlds, that what then was prophecy may continue
unfolding into history,--that the dearest hopes of the human race
may not be extinguished in disappointment, and that the last may
prove the noblest empire of time.